Before we go much further, I need to tell you about the romances.
Of course, I read other books. Lots of them. Very high-brow stuff, too, for the most part. You know - Shakespeare, Shelley, Virginia Woolf. And Genest, Rilke and Tolstoy. All that.
I got hooked on pink crack as a teen. Do you remember Barbara Cartland? She was a popular icon at one point: an octogenarian in rose silks, trailed by swaths of pekingese. Even I cringed at the gilt candelabra and pseudo-Versailles back drops.
But the books! 140-160 pages, paragraphs of no more than five lines and dialogue which, way before texting, often ended in "...". Schmaltzy beyond belief. Never more licentious than a kiss. I started when I was 14, gradually expanding my tastes to novels by other romanticists.
Over the following dozen years, I read over a thousand of them.
Yep, you read that right. Over. One. Thousand. I'll help you with the math. That's about 90/year. One or two a week. Except that doesn't reflect the reality of periodic 3 book a day benders.
I eschewed the bodice rippers, and had no time for Harlequin. For a long time, I told myself this meant I hadn't quite sunk to the bottom.
While I wrote a thesis on romances, I make no pretence that the authors I read were more than competent (one exception - see below). Collectively, however, the books formed a literary river into which I am now glad that I was baptised.
It was all there. The importance of setting. The right balance of dialogue and narration. The impossibility of ever being completely original. The tension between voice and genre.
And I loved them.
The exception, by the way, is Georgette Heyer. A genius. Why not overcome your own prejudices, read her and find out why?
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